I failed to get into my firm and insurance, got BCD in A levels(English,chem and bio respectively) and got rejected. I am into clearing to try and get into pharmacy at sunderland, they are meant to make a decision today, they have said that I match 240 points but the D in biology is the problem. They have kept me waiting for ages now.

Bradford are offering me a place into biomedical sciences/pharmocology and then saying after a year if I get good marks I can transfer.

The other issue is I am in india and have looked at some unis here who are accepting me but they want the certificates (e.g. from aqa). However when do aqa publish these certificates and can I get them earlier?.

While waiting for the descion from Sunderland, I would look further into the course Bradford is offering you. I heard that many people who have missed their offers for Medicine/Pharmacy take this course at Bradford in order to transfer after a year. If you do not get into Sunderland, this could be a good choice for you. If you don't feel that this would be suitable for you, you could always take a year out to repeat modules on your A-Levels to improve your grades and re-apply through Ucas again.

Certificates are not usually issued until October/November so I don't think there would be any chance of getting them now. However, I thought that a statement of results would be good enough proof for the time being.

thanks for the quick reply, good to know someone can offer me some advice. The thing is if I want to join in india I NEED certificates and also they are asking for the grades I got to be converted into bloody percentages but dont grade boundaries change anyway!?.

As for the bradford course I am looking into it. I really dont want to retake the year though because I would have to go to the same college again who thought me bad in the first place.

So is there no chance that certificates can be made earlier by the exam board?

One more thing: Is it worth emailing sunderland about their decision as it may be hard for them to contact me on mobile as I am still in india(back in uk tommorow). They havent offered me a place thus far due to my biology and thats all so should I try and convince them in my email?

(Original post by padma)
So is there no chance that certificates can be made earlier by the exam board?

I have never really heard of certificates being issued early. As far as I know they are issued around the same time for everyone which assumes they are done in bulk. You could enquire to your exam centre about your requirements as this is where exam boards ultimately send your certificates to in the end. You should definately contact your exam officer to see what arrangements can be made if any.

One more thing: Is it worth emailing sunderland about their decision as it may be hard for them to contact me on mobile as I am still in india(back in uk tommorow). They havent offered me a place thus far due to my biology and thats all so should I try and convince them in my email?

Rather than email I would call since you are more likely to give you a decision over the phone than by email. And they are more likely to answer a call than an email. I know it may be difficult being in India so thats why I am saying you should call them rather than waiting for them to call you. Also if they give you a decision it should eventually show up on Ucas Track. If they give you a decision this way before you call them then you don't really have to do anything. Hopefully things will go your way, so Good Luck!

they cant give me a decision on track as my firm changed my course once they had rejected me and I have left that in case I dont get into anything else. When I phoned sunderland yesterday she asked me about my ucas number and said I had an offer and I explained to her. Is that ok and what should I do?

If Sunderland said they'd make a decision today, phone them and ask if they've decided yet. Just explain politely that you really need to get everything sorted ASAP since you want to go to uni this year and I'm sure they'll understand. I don't really know how you can convince them, but if you were predicted higher than a D, you could say that shows you were capable of doing better and just had a bad day. The same goes if you only really messed up one or two modules and they dragged your grade down. Or if you were only a few marks off a C, tell them that because they don't get your UMS marks. I guess you just have to convince them that you have a real passion for pharmacy and are prepared to work really hard to make sure you succeed. If Sunderland reject you, you just have to decide whether you'd rather take the course at Bradford and hope you can transfer or go to uni in India. I don't think there's any way of getting your certificates early because they might not have even been printed yet, although it wouldn't hurt to phone AQA and find out, but if you explain the situation to the uni, I don't see why they wouldn't accept a statement of results. If you can possibly get in touch with someone from your college, preferably the exams officer, maybe you could ask them to phone the uni for you?

(Original post by padma)
sunderland are still listed in pharmacy within clearing, yet no phone call was made, are unis open on sat?

You could try - but the first rush is over now so don't be surprised if they aren't. To pick up an earlier question of yours - to translate your grades into percentages, the only thing you can do is say either that an A grade means you got 80% or more, a B grade 70-79%, and so on. If they insist that you have to be more specific you will have to take your UMS mark and calculate it as a percentage of 600 (for A2) - so if you got 500/600 overall this would be just over 83%. However, the unis concerned need to understand that your UMS marks do not appear on your final certificates, so they would have to accept that the only evidence is your Statement of Results - which has got "provisional" written all over it. Hope that makes sense!